The censor’s paradox: Israeli censorship, Gaza and information control in the AI age

Israel is the only democracy where journalists are legally required to submit material to a military censor - and where those same journalists are also legally constrained from explaining how that system works. The result is a paradoxical loop; censorship is widely known, routinely practiced and structurally difficult to describe from within.
This panel examines how that loop shaped reporting on Gaza. Drawing on investigations by Haaretz, +972 Magazine/Local Call and Shomrim, the discussion will showcase moments when journalists were forced to confront censorship. Discussing how OSINT, satellite imagery and international collaborations can help negotiate and publish facts the censor may have initially blocked.
The panel will also address how censorship persists despite its growing futility. As information circulates globally and in real time, Israeli authorities increasingly rely on technological enforcement - including AI systems used to monitor journalists’, soldiers’, and civilians’ social media activity for potential “leaks.”
Israel offers a revealing case study of how states double down on control even as it becomes harder to sustain. Rather than treating censorship as a single institution, the panel approaches it as a shared condition of Israeli journalism - collectively understood, unevenly enforced and difficult to name from within - and asks what this means for reporting war in the age of AI, OSINT and global information flows.
Moderated by Omer Benjakob.